The Best British Short Stories of 1922

Best British Short Stories of 1922, by Various

Project Gutenberg's The Best British Short Stories of 1922, by Various This eBook is for the use of anyone anywhere at no cost and with almost no restrictions whatsoever. You may copy it, give it away or re-use it under the terms of the Project Gutenberg License included with this eBook or online at www.gutenberg.org
Title: The Best British Short Stories of 1922 Where Was Wych Street?, By Stacy Aumonier; The Olive, By Algernon Blackwood; Once A Hero, By Harold Brighouse; The Pensioner, By William Caine; Broadsheet Ballad, By A. E. Coppard; The Christmas Present, By Richmal Crompton; "Genius", By Elinor Mordaunt; The Devil To Pay, By Max Pemberton; Empty Arms, By Roland Pertwee; Lena Wrace, By May Sinclair; The Woman Who Sat Still, By Parry Truscott; Major Wilbraham, By Hugh Walpole
Author: Various
Editor: Edward J. O'Brien and John Cournos
Release Date: August 14, 2007 [EBook #22319]
Language: English
Character set encoding: ISO-8859-1
*** START OF THIS PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK BRITISH SHORT STORIES ***

Produced by David Widger

"THE BEST BRITISH SHORT STORIES OF 1922"
Edited By Edward J. O'Brien And John Cournos,
Small, Maynard & Company, Boston.
Copyright, 1922, by The Boston Transcript Company. Copyright, 1922, by Small, Maynard & Company, Inc.

Contents:
Where Was Wych Street?, By Stacy Aumonier
The Olive, By Algernon Blackwood
Once A Hero, By Harold Brighouse
The Pensioner, By William Caine
Broadsheet Ballad, By A. E. Coppard
The Christmas Present, By Richmal Crompton
"Genius", By Elinor Mordaunt
The Devil To Pay, By Max Pemberton
Empty Arms, By Roland Pertwee
Lena Wrace, By May Sinclair
The Woman Who Sat Still, By Parry Truscott
Major Wilbraham, By Hugh Walpole

WHERE WAS WYCH STREET?, by Stacy Aumonier
(From The Strand Magasine and The Saturday Evening Post)
Copyright, 1921, by The Curtis Publishing Company. Copyright, 1922, by Stacy Aum?nier. Reprinted by permission of the author and of Curtis Brown, Ltd. people were Mr. and Mrs. Dawes. Mr. Dawes was an entirely negative person, but Mrs. Dawes shone by virtue of a high, whining, insistent voice, keyed to within half a note of hysteria.
In the public bar of the Wagtail, in Wapping, four men and a woman were drinking beer and discussing diseases. It was not a pretty subject, and the company was certainly not a handsome one. It was a dark November evening, and the dingy lighting of the bar seemed but to emphasize the bleak exterior. Drifts of fog and damp from without mingled with the smoke of shag. The sanded floor was kicked into a muddy morass not unlike the surface of the pavement. An old lady down the street had died from pneumonia the previous evening, and the event supplied a fruitful topic of conversation. The things that one could get! Everywhere were germs eager to destroy one. At any minute the symptoms might break out. And so--one foregathered in a cheerful spot amidst friends, and drank forgetfulness.
Prominent in this little group was Baldwin Meadows, a sallow-faced villain with battered features and prominent cheek-bones, his face cut and scarred by a hundred fights. Ex-seaman, ex-boxer, ex-fish-porter--indeed, to every one's knowledge, ex-everything. No one knew how he lived. By his side lurched an enormous coloured man who went by the name of Harry Jones. Grinning above a tankard sat a pimply-faced young man who was known as The Agent. Silver rings adorned his fingers. He had no other name, and most emphatically no address, but he "arranged things" for people, and appeared to thrive upon it in a scrambling, fugitive manner.
Then, at one point, the conversation suddenly took a peculiar turn. It came about through Mrs. Dawes mentioning that her aunt, who died from eating tinned lobster, used to work in a corset shop in Wych Street. When she said that, The Agent, whose right eye appeared to survey the ceiling, whilst his left eye looked over the other side of his tankard, remarked:
"Where was Wych Street, ma?"
"Lord!" exclaimed Mrs. Dawes. "Don't you know, dearie? You must be a young 'un, you must. Why, when I was a gal every one knew Wych Street. It was just down there where they built the Kingsway, like."
Baldwin Meadows cleared his throat, and said:
"Wych Street used to be a turnin' runnin' from Long Acre into Wellington Street."
"Oh, no, old boy," chipped in Mr. Dawes, who always treated the ex-man with great deference. "If you'll excuse me, Wych Street was a narrow lane at the back of the old Globe Theatre, that used to pass by the church."
"I know what I'm talkin' about," growled Meadows.
Mrs. Dawes's high nasal whine broke in:
"Hi, Mr. Booth, you used ter know yer wye abaht. Where was Wych Street?"
Mr. Booth, the proprietor, was polishing a tap. He looked up.
"Wych Street? Yus, of course I knoo Wych Street. Used to go there with some of the boys--when I was Covent Garden way. It was at right angles to the Strand, just east of Wellington Street."
"No, it